yin yoga - viveka gardens

The Yin Approach

The key aspect of Yin is that poses are supported and held for three to five minutes. Under gravity, in stillness with no forcing, a deeeep stretch happens. The Yin approach involves a certain ‘sitting with’ as new layers of tightness – mental, physical and emotional – reveal themselves and resolve (or not).

Yin and Yang Yin yoga is contemporary mash-up, developed in the 1980s by a yoga practitioner, who was also a Daoist (Chinese philosophy), to counterpoint his ‘yang’ practice. Whereas there’s a strong, muscular, blood-pumping and athletic pole in yoga practice (not really what you find at VG), yin explores the soft, yielding and introversion.

Key Benefits Yin tissues are deeper: the bones, ligaments (what join bones to bones), tendons (muscle to bones) and fascia, a web of connective tissue through the whole body that has only recently come under scrutiny. These tissues are ‘cold and dry’ in Chinese medicine and lose juice as we get older. Yin practice brings them under traction so that the body’s rest and repair mechanisms are stimulated. Prevention of joint rigidity and increase in synovial fluid around the joint capsules for instance, are promoted.

My journey with Yin I decided to train in yin because I found after a class that I invariably felt vulnerable and emotions arose, a way I first felt when I came to yoga. I had seen a really useful and profound excavation then, and knew it as an opportunity to let go of ‘stuff’. It’s said that if you practise traditional hatha for a long time you are likely to develop a yin approach in any case, and this has been the case for me.

It’s great if you have a mature practice as yin will make a lot of sense but it’s also available to people who may be new to yoga who are comfortable with stillness.